Bridget sits before a mirror, methodically brushing his hair. Forrest paces the room, lost in gesticulatory agitation.

--I'm telling you, Beautiful, X doesn't have a patch on Omega. I've tripled the troopers and slapped on more S'pht'kr. I've multiplied the maps and lengthened the levels. I've supplemented the script and tacked on more text. I have enumerated ninety-nine new names for Marcus. As for Hathor, widowed W'rkncacnter, I've--Please stop, Bridget interjects. And I rather doubt that's how it's pronounced.--Oh. How then? Wark-a-kink-actor?--Cute.--Work-and-caulk-inter?--Not cool. --Then how, hm?

Bridget pauses, smiles and winks at his reflection. Really, I couldn't say, but in my arms he was always Darren

{somewhere in the heavens}

Bemused primal chaos awakens from aeon-long slumber, his true name breathed aloud. The community was long since ruined. What was left to do?

Surely there would be new communities; the diluted were incorrigible. So many posts to read; It would take time. The timeless one would take that time, the time to read through every screed, and having read, he would strategically, intentionally, devise a post that would finally piss everyone off.

The W'rkncacnter chuckles within the solar sea, undulating in the plasma as he calculates infinitys.

Dr. Bolton walks alone along the shore, a funereal urn in his hands. Seawater splashes his trousers as he empties its contents, a fine gray powder, into the bay. Never one given to sentiment, the doctor takes aim at a distant buoy and casts vessel-vacant at bobbin-bobbing. He misses: just a little to the right. Bolton shrugs.

--So long, Karuma.

Turning, the doctor surveys the distant olmec, his birthright, and thinks on the business at hand as he leaves the waves behind.

I will build myself a copper towerWith four ways out and no way inBut mine the glory; mine the power

{my own private thermoplyae}

--THE LORD is my shepherd; I shall not camp.

An aged maths professor sits quietly in a small chapel, the sole attendee at vespers. The celebrant elevates his palms in Orans; the cantor intones the benediction.

--THE LORD be with you (a pause) And also the JUICE.

The lecturer blinks as a memory long thought forgotten taps cheekily on the window pane of his cerebral chamber. There were so many that needed kicking. I kicked that they might 4GET, but did any mark the lesson? What did the bodhisattva merit for his compassion, save a sore foot?

[attachment=2385:sunyata.png]

{an alley, more aptly described as a laboratory}

Two men stand over a third's comatose body. The vertical pair wear the same shabby outfit, albeit in different colours. Tattered Black turns to Frayed White, cocks his head to one side, and quips.

--I can't place it, Raymond, but your jacket seems familiar, as if I'd seen it before in some dimly recollected dream.

Ray gives a crooked smile and pauses to light his thirtieth cigarette of the morning.

--Patrick, my dear old thing, I took it from your closet.--Ah. Quite. I remember having one of those. A home, I mean.--Indeed. But it seems we've been gifted with a fresh volunteer. Too many opioids, or not enough insulin, I'd wager.--Heh. Too much MARARTHON, you mean; have a look in his wallet.

Casting the remnant of his Lucky Strike to the rats in the corner, Ray reaches down and withdraws a bit of rotting leather. His eyes run over the lines etched across the plastic within.

--Well! Naggy, poor sod. A few moments immersed in the harmony of the spheres will do him a spot of good.

Patrick sets to work with a razor, gently removing what remains of the man's hair. After affixing the device (a colander, soon to be wedded to a lemon battery by means of jumper cables) to the specimen's palpitating brainpan, he pauses.

--Eh, it's not quite cricket what you and I do. Wonder what he'll dream about.--Rubbish, Ray rejoins, and completes the circuit

{uki's big date}

Brooder, bushy-bearded, picks his way along the remnant of a marble walk, his eyes resting upon the ruin, once a rambling house, that lies ahead. The roof has long since fallen in; a few coniferous boughs woven through the rafters offer but feeble resistance to elemental assaults. The door rests uneasy in its frame; at his knock it falls inward with a splintering crash, kicking up dust. A frightened, mewling cry rises from some unseen lower chamber. A pert little man is hanging a banner -MARARTHON 4EVAH- between two rotting beams. He whirls at the crash-but smiles broadly in recognition of his visitor.

--Mr. Smith. You came! Today is the twentieth anniversary; isn't it glorious!--Please stop, Ukimalefu. All the others departed years ago. Why can't you let the kids return to their homes? --Nonsense! The Pfhorums are their home. The Pfhorums are their family! And you and I, you and I are their 'parents.

Smith's gorge rises, but he forces composure.

--It's over, Uki. The Ruppe brothers have gone feral in the cellar, feeding on the spiders that scuttle 'neath the floorboards, chewing discarded bits of dubblbubbl that fall through the cracks. CryoS can't stop crying. Just look at $lave; has he uttered a word in the last three years? Has he even once moved from that spot?

$lave, decremented variable, emaciated mapper, sits before the rusted-out husk of a Quadra, his quivering hand dragging what was once a mouse in the same familiar patterns, connecting polygons that are not there, that will never be there. Uki comes to stand behind him, massaging the boy's withered frame.

--Marathon is forever! It will never die! Nova is coming; soon we will bask in its splendour.

Smith dies a little.

--I'm going now. I won't be bringing any more Alpha1 revisions.--We don't need them! I've contracted my own developer, and he can't stop chattering about how awesome his new fully bump-mapped, 2.5plus0.5 true 3D rendering engine is going to be. Isn't that so, Mr. Cardigan?

Leaning in a corner is a makeshift skeleton of twigs, bound up with twine in crude mockery of the human form. A moth-eaten sweatervest is draped across two scraps of bark which serve as shoulders. Uki throws his voice, which takes on a nasal twang.

And on the 7th day of our LORD, it was spoken into the darkness. "Let there be darkness.", And the CLIQUE saw what was wrought. And somewhere deep in space, on a lonesome terminal... Durandal was not laughing. He was weeping, for the closure foresaw so long ago in that metallic tomb, the Marathon, was nigh. Not even the power of 2.5D could save him now. There was no fake bridge to hide in, no fake portal to go through. Leela comforted Durandal, like the sister she always was, while Tycho sulked in cleanroom 52. For even when the closure occurs, one must not forget, that something came from nothing once.

And something shall come again.

And so, I Lhowon shall run towards the Horizon, with the knife strapped to my shin.

In respectful reply, I present partial notes from a nigh forgotten planned post, presented as I find and collect the pieces:

The Wasteland

For Patrickil miglior roviniato.

The Burial of the Dead

December is the cruelest month, breedingXmas subs out of the dead Pfhorums, mixingNostalgia and denial, stirringDull mappers with fresh content.Appleswitch held us still, coveringThe community in lengthy downtime, feedingA little activity to dead IRC channels.

...

Who are the members that cling, what mappers emergeOut of these deserted ruins? Twelve-year-old,You cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap of broken images, where Halo 8 is played,And realistic physics give no shelter, pixel shaders no relief,And emasculated Bungie no sound of sequels. OnlyThere is shadow under this AGENT ORANGE,(Come in under the shadow of this AGENT ORANGE),And I will show you something different from eitherYour Infinity remakes at morning striding behind youOr your abandoned scenario at evening rising to meet you;I will show you 4GET in a few blog posts.

...

"You gave me Lua v2 first a year ago;"They called me your Lua v2 sister."--Yet when we came back, late, from testing our scripts,Your drive full and your trigger finger tired, I could notSpeack and my eyes failed, I was neitherLiving nor dead, and I knew nothing,Looking into the heart of THE LORD, and His anatta.

...

Nostradamous, famous clairvoyante,Was sick of ESB, neverthelessIs known to be the wisest poster in all of Marathon,With a wicked lookahead. Here, said he,Is your replay, a video of you jumping from a great height,(You run when you hit the ground. Look!)

...

ESB on Bungie Day,Under the orange haze of a Californian sunset,A crowd flowed over Claude's connection, so many,I had not thought 4GET had undone so many.*NM*s, short and infrequent, were exhaled,And each man fixed his eyes on 2 new messages have been posted!Flowed up the Pfhorums and down Mariusnet,To where Ray perpetually hosts One Way 2Insensitive to the weak protests of the gathered crowd.There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: "Falko!"You who were with me in the duels on the AIM chatroom!"That embarrassing netpack you buried last year,"Has it begun to decay? Will it CORRUPT this year?"Or has continued play disturbed its bed?"Oh keep meatmanek far hence, that's friend to CLIQUE,"Or with his logs he'll dig it up again!"You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable,--ma soeur!"

Last edited by thermoplyae on Jan 19th '09, 00:11, edited 1 time in total.

A tear to mine eye, Thera has brought. 'Tis certainly the days foretold in the lore of old speaking unto the closure.

Alas, My own predictions shot down in the days of what little youth and vigor still possessed this place. Yet, foretold it was many moons ago, and here it lays at our feet, our sins brought to bear. I shed a tear at what is to come, for naught but chaos and destruction loom on the horizon. Look, oh great ones, what hath been wrought. Our little kingdom sheltered from the shearing winds of bump mapping and yelling 12 year olds crumbles not by any one hand or force, but by the lack thereof.

Attrition by boredom. The very fabric of the future lies in peril, with no light to guide us, no road to follow. Who shall stumble off into the abyss that is the sands of time, and who of the few there are shall huddle around the fire? Will we one last time conjure the spirit of the thing, a triumphant scream across these sands? Will those wanders of the sands hear the call, and unbidden come to us? They, the scattered, will they remember the thing? Perhaps best said, if we build it, will they come? They will navigate to their browsers, clog the tubes, and arrive here at the peak of innocence, come to see something of a past time. They will come to see a story line, but not any story. They will hear the sounds of the grenades brushing against metallic walls, the clatter of rifle shells against metal floors. And in that innocence, they shall see. It is not the quasi-action movie plot, metallic green armor, or achievements. It is what you take from the story, that there is still some good in the world.